This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Alberta prosecutors appeal acquittal of trucker in aboriginal woman’s death

Rallies were held in cities across Canada on Thursday in support of justice for Cindy Gladue, who died four years ago.

Protesters fill the streets of Edmonton on Thursday to show their support for Cindy Gladue. Alberta’s Crown attorney’s office launched an appeal after the acquittal of the long-haul truck driver accused of her murder. (Topher Seguin / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

As thousands of women staged rallies across Canada in memory of Cindy Gladue, the First Nations woman who bled to death in a bathtub, Alberta’s Crown attorney’s office launched an appeal after the acquittal of the long-haul truck driver accused of her murder.

Gladue, an Edmonton-area sex-worker and mother, died after she received an 11-centimetre injury to her vagina four years ago. Barton’s defence attorney’s claim the wound happened during rough sex.

During the trial, parts of Gladue’s preserved vagina was brought into the court as evidence. Many First Nations women and legal advocates said they could not think of another case where a dead woman’s vagina was brought to court. They argue this is a further desecration of her body.

Barton, an Ontario resident, was acquitted last March 18.

Article Continued Below

Any woman in Canada couldn’t fathom having their own intimate body parts on display in a courtroom, said Christa Big Canoe, the legal advocacy director of Toronto’s Aboriginal Legal Services, as she stood outside Ontario’s ministry of the attorney general’s office on Bay St., at one of the rallies seeking justice for Gladue.

She was so bothered when she heard Gladue’s vagina was on display, Big Canoe searched case law and called colleagues across Canada to ask if they had ever seen or heard of something like this before and no one could.

Everyone felt it was unprecedented.

“It doesn’t surprise me the first time we see it happening it is to an indigenous woman . . . me speaking out against the use of her vagina as evidence is important. It is important that even those of us within legal systems were shocked by this and wonder why there wasn’t more thought or weight given to something like the integrity of the process,” she said.

Alberta prosecutors allege the justice made errors in instructing the jury. First Nations advocates have complained the mostly white, male jurors were not representative in dealing with a case concerning the death of an aboriginal woman.

“How come no one asked about, ‘What is the Cree’s practice surrounding the body of the dead? The reality is, that was a sacred part of her body that birthed her children. That was a part of her body that she fully owned. Harm and violence can continue after the cause of her death,” she said.

Ryerson professor and lawyer Pam Palmater said she felt this appeal would “never have come about were it not for this national day of action by Canadians and First Nations saying, ‘This just isn’t right.’

“You have a man who clearly admitted to being there, committing the acts that led to her death and he gets off scot-free? That sends the message that you can keep murdering and stealing our women with impunity. And a country’s impunity rate speaks to whether or not its system is just or corrupt,” said Palmater, a Mi’kmaq citizen who ran for grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 2012.

“It isn’t just the viciousness of how she died . . . but after her death to have her private parts dissected from her body and paraded around the courtroom, as if her spirit still didn’t need to be whole, it represents the indignity of the justice system. This is the worst case scenario of what could happen to a murdered or missing indigenous woman,” she said.

On Wednesday, the RCMP confirmed they would be updating the report they released last year on the 1,181 murdered and missing aboriginal women and girls in Canada, from 1980 to 2012, this May.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com